Two nights per week, a man named Carlo and I help lead two recovery meetings at different churches. I remember the first time I heard someone say that they stopped going to church on Sunday mornings and started going to recovery meetings instead. I did not understand it then, but I understand it now. At some point, church on Sunday morning became an unsafe place and time for sinners. Many of the formerly incarcerated men I work with in recovery from drug and alcohol abuse do not see church on Sunday morning as a place and time they’ll be received. There is often fear on both sides. Formerly incarcerated men are afraid of being stigmatized and rejected, and churches are afraid of welcoming a person with a history of criminal behavior. There are risks on both sides and a desperate need for mediation.
A major role of the Siafu Leadership Home is to mediate the relationship between formerly incarcerated men and churches, and we have found that recovery meetings are a great place to start. After attending for about four months, Carlo is now taking on a leadership role in the recovery meeting at our home church. In the recovery meeting – a sacred space and time ruled by the principles of acceptance, anonymity, and equality – Carlo does not have to pretend to be someone he is not. He does not have to hide his history of chronic incarceration and illicit drug use or his irresponsible relationships with women and money. In the recovery meeting, Carlo is equal to everyone else – a sinner in need of a Savior.
Many in the church are tempted to see Carlo as different or a special kind of sinner, but the more he shares his story, the more people in the church see and talk about their own brokenness. In this way, formerly incarcerated persons and people in recovery from drug and alcohol are a gift to the church because they force the congregation to be just as transparent about their own transgressions before the Body of Christ and an almighty and holy God. At our Seven Harvests dinners where we work side-by-side with both formerly incarcerated men and women in recovery, many of our guests will ask which of the servers or prep cooks are “in the program.” Rather than disclose, I encourage our guests to see everyone on staff as equals and that we leave it up to the individual whether to share their story.
In the Gospels, Jesus was hardest on those religious leaders who thought of themselves as holier than the common people. Relentlessly, through parables, sermons, and His life, He cast the vision of the Kingdom of God as a place where the humble and marginal sit at the front of a common table. Ultimately, we were once all sinners in need of a mediator, but now God offers us reconciliation and new life in Him through Christ. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:17-18). We pray that God will continue to use the Siafu Leadership Home as a reflection of Christ’s reconciliation between all sinners and Himself.